Substrates for rolling tobacco products and herbs are well known. Such substrates can be natural or manufactured. For example, it is known to use a raw tobacco leaf to roll your own cigar. Likewise, it is known to use manufactured tobacco rolling substrates for the same purpose. Smokers often use a variety of lingo to refer to tobacco rolling substrates, including “rolling paper,” “cigarette paper,” “cigar wraps,” “wraps” and the like. Generally speaking, these substrates are small sheets, rolls, or leaves of paper substrate that are packaged and sold for rolling smokable product into a cigarette form. Typically, the rolling process is accomplished either by hand or with the aid of a rolling apparatus. During the process of rolling a cigarette, an individual sheet of rolling paper may be filled with tobacco, herbs, cannabis, hash, cloves, damiana leaves, and other smokable product.
Rolling paper is offered for those people who prefer to roll their own cigarette or cigar, where the person can customize the cigarette or cigar using any blend of smokable product rolled into any shape and size they prefer.
Rolling papers are most commonly fabricated from wood pulp, hemp, flax, rice straw, tobacco, and the like. The common form factor of a single rolling paper is a long rectangle having a narrow strip of glue, gum or other adhesive all along one of the long edges. Depending upon the geographic region, rolling paper may or may not have gummed edges. Rolling papers made from tobacco usually do not have gummed edges; however, gummed edges can easily be added if required. Rolling paper constructed from tobacco is usually referred to as “homogenized paper,” “cigar wraps,” or simply “wraps.”
Rolling papers are usually sold in lengths falling within a range of 70 mm to 110 mm, and various widths. Most manufacturers sell rolling paper using the designations of “1 (Single wide),” “1¼ sized,” “1½ sized” and “Doublewide (2 or 2.0).” However, within the industry, these designations have slightly different meanings, wherein the size references are not definitive but moreover a general size. Across the various brands of cigarette papers the actual widths of the papers using these designations vary greatly. For example, the 1¼ designation is used with papers having widths ranging from about 1.7 inches to 2 inches, and the 1½ designation is used with papers having widths ranging from around 2.4 to 3 inches. However the length of these papers is always 78 mm (+/−1 mm). It is noted that the 1¼ size is also referred to as “Spanish Size” or “French” rolling paper in some parts of the world.
While a 1¼ sized paper is not exactly 25% larger than a 1 (single wide) paper, there is meaning to these size names. A better way to describe these accurately is that a 1¼ size is designed to roll a cigarette that contains about 25% more filler than a single wide paper. Similarly a 1½ sized paper is designed to roll a cigarette that contains about 50% more than a single wide paper. A 1¼ sized paper is larger than a 1 (single wide) paper and naturally a 1½ sized size paper is larger than a 1¼ sized paper, and a double wide is larger than a 1½ sized paper.
King Size is another multi-meaning term. While a King Size cigarette is typically 84 mm long, a King Size rolling paper has a length of 100 mm or 110 mm.
Rolling paper is commonly packaged in a configuration stacking a plurality of individual sheets and placing the stack within a dispensing box. Rolling paper is extremely sensitive to moisture. The current packaging configuration leaves the rolling paper susceptible to damage from moisture absorption. It is understood that the longer period of time the rolling paper is stored, the greater the likelihood of absorption of moisture, resulting in damaged and unusable product.
Such damage may be exacerbated in a packaging configuration where the rolling papers are bound in a booklet formation, exposing the rolling papers to humidity in the environment.
What is desired is a packaging that isolates the rolling paper from exposure to moisture, thus extending the shelf life of the packaged rolling paper. Furthermore, it would be highly desirable to provide individually packaged leaves of rolling substrate, wherein the individual packages are hermetically sealed in order to extend the useful shelf life of the product—particularly for rolling papers fabricated of homogenized paper or other moisture sensitive materials.